Maharaja
Jaya Chamaraja Wodeyar was a prince among princes. A student of history,
politics and economics, he did not confine his interest to only these
three subjects, but extended his search for knowledge to other areas of
interest. Veda and Vedantha, music and art were also his favourite subjects
of study. He did not merely absorb knowledge as it came to him from these
books. He held many a discussion with the masters of these subjects revealing
a mind extraoridnarily keen and penetrating. Not surprisngly he came to
be known as a philosopher, both in India and abroad. Organisations abroad
invited him to deliver scholarly lectures, while the Government of India
sent him as a cultural ambassador.

Jaya
Chamaraja Wodeyar thus emerged as a scholar, apart from being a popular
ruler. His speeches touched various subjects and whenever he spoke he
spoke with a sense of authority. His speeches were not mumbo-jumbo. The
speeches made by him during his reign reveal his scholarship in various
topics like philosophy, religion, music, art, politics, administration,
economics, history and wildlife.

The
Maharaja toured abroad several times, delivering lectures and earning
encomiums for the schoarly addresses. He also earned fame as a writer
of works on Indian philosophy. His famous works were "Dattatreya"
"Geetha and Indian Culture" and "Dharma and Human Values".

His
speeches bore the stamp of philopshy, with aptly chosen quotations from
Vedas or Bhagavad Gita. His speeches did not relate to only to the past
ideals and values. He related to them to the most modern science of his
day. He delivered three lectures on Traditions, Ideals and Values in the
Atomic Age, under the Aggery Fraser-Griggsby Foundation, during his tour
in Ghana.

"My
view-point is essentially that of questioning layman, who enquires in
order to find out the why and whither of human conduct and the achievements
of history as well as the prospects of civilisation," he said while
referring to tradition and unrest in modern history in the first of the
three lectures he delivered there.

"The
advent of the atom bomb into a world of varying moral standards and uncertain
international friendships has made every one aware for the first time
of the awful fact that, if the world ever lost its spiritual and moral
equilibrium, it was now possible completely to eliminate life itself,"
warned the phiolosopher nearly four decades ago. A warning relevant even
today.

He
further pointed out that the course of recent history has certainly not
run smooth, but it has furnished sufficient material for the philosophic
historian to compare the merits and defects of opposing systems in action.
His second lecture made an estimate of democracy and totalitarianism of
the then prevailing situation in the international arena.

Maharaja
Jaya Chamaraja Wodeyar made an attempt to explore Education and Values
in the Atomic Age. He emphasised that education has a great part to play
in assuring the intellectual and moral basis not only for citizenship
of the state but also for that world citizenship which is the imperative
need of the time. For education adequately to serve the purposes of democracy
and world citizenship it should be in a real sense "liberal",
said the Maharaja, who and his forefathers were liberal rulers of Mysore
with far-reaching progressive programmes and projects, including education.

In
his speech, the Maharaja recalled the Indian tradition of non-violence
and purity of motive and means, the tradition of ethical and religious
approach to all political questions and noted that these had found a perfect
embodiment in Mahatma Gandhi. Further elaborating on Ahimsa, the plank
on which the Father of the Nation had fought and brought freedom to India,
Maharaja Jaya Chamaraja Wodeyar observed, "One could draw up a whole
declaration of human rights in terms of ahimsa. If individuals and nations
are animated by such a belief in a beneficient Supreme Power, in truth
and in human brotherhood, we can look forward to a
future free from anxiety and fear and full of hope and promise of happiness,
he said, concluding his scholarly erudition with a passage from Matsyapurana:

May
those in distress become happy, May the sins of animate and inanimate
beings disappear, May the evils of the universe be destroyed.

Delivering
the Independence Day lecture in Mysore in 1959, by when Jaya Chamaraja
Wodeyar had lost his place as Maharaja and headed the state as Governor,
referred to Mahatma Gandhi at the very outset of his address and paid
a "homage of reverence, love and thankfulness to his memory."

"He
was not merely the organiser and architect of our freedom; he ennobled
our very being. As the apostle not only of truth and ahimsa but also of
purity in private and public conduct he raised us, and indeed the whole
of mankind, to a higher level of social and political life," the
Governor paid tributes to the Mahatma and went on highlight the great
responsibility Independence has brought with it for the maintenance of
security of the country. "This task has been nobly performed by the
three Defence Services," he noted.

His
convocation address at Sri Venkateswara University in Tirupati was that
of a visinoary. Highlighting the role of education and languages, the
Maharaja, a lover of Kannada and Sanskrit and whose predecessors have
enormously enriched Kannada literature, remarked: "An independent
nation cannot function without its own national language. That English
should be replaced by our own language is a patriotic necessity. But so
far as university education is concerned at any rate, it appears prudent
to delay the change-over until our lingustic consolidation has proceeded
further and our own lnaguages have become more adequately equipped
with the machinery of modern learning,--encyclopaedias, dictionaries,
reference books, treatises, text books and a widely intelligible vocabulary
of technical terms of modern science." He told the students, "the
most elaborate code of ethical conduct that any one could draw up cannot
go much beyond the simple exhortation of the Upanishad's Satyam vada,
Dharmam cara. These should be the watch-words of our public and private
life."

At
another speech in Madras (now Chennai), Jaya Chamaraja Wodeyar said it
has been accepted now that the joy of art is the heritage of all and that
aesthetic activity and appreciation are indispensable aids in the enrichment
and refinement of the human soul in general.

"Art
refines our inner as well as our physical life and provides that satsifaction
and joy which acquisitions and activities on a merely material plane can
never give. As Nachiketas said, 'na vittena tarpaniyo manushyo'. In other
words, man does not live by bread alone. Music and dance, among the arts,
have always had a high place in Indian aestehtics. They are conceived
as having their origin in the Divine, which is itself described the Upanishads
as the quintessence of aesthetic pleasure 'raso vai sah'. Our arts embody
the deepest experience and wisdom of mankind, and they have a spiritual
import and purpose," the composer-Maharaja said. Jaya Chamaraja Wodeyar
had himself drawn spiritual inspiration and solace from music, composing
a number of kirtans on "Devi".

Maharaja
Jaya Chamaraja Wodeyar's speeches are full of wisdom, punctuated with
quotations drawn from vedas and upanishads. Rich in meaning, these quotations
were appropriate to the occasion. When it came to his favourite subjects
like Veda or Vedantha, he dwelt at length propogating the Indian thought
as propounded by several seers and sages of the past. He was a true scholar
and genuine ambassador of Indian philosophy.